US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis spent four days in East Asia trying to keep on the rails key relationships — two friendly, one adversarial — that his boss President Donald Trump has thrown into confusion.

It will be a “bumpy road” to the nuclear negotiations with North Korea later this month, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned Sunday, telling his South Korean and Japanese counterparts they must maintain a strong defensive stance so the diplomats can negotiate from a position of strength.

The suffering of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims is worse than it has been portrayed by the media, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said, countering claims by the government of Aung San Suu Kyi that the international press has been biased in its coverage of what the U.S. and U.N have called a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Saturday that he could not imagine United States ever accepting a nuclear North Korea, warning that its rapidly advancing nuclear and missile programs would undermine, not strengthen, its security.

The timing of U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ trip to the Philippines this week couldn’t have been better, coming just as it celebrated a victory against Islamist militants in Marawi City – with a critical dose of help from the U.S. military.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis hinted on Monday about the existence of military options on North Korea that might spare Seoul from a brutal counterattack but declined to say what kind of options he was talking about or whether they involved the use of lethal force.

The confrontation between Qatar and its three immediate neighbors has hit a wall. Efforts by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, ably supported by Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker has partly offset the President’s early ardent support of Saudi Arabia and its friends. The likelihood of President Trump overruling his Secretaries of Defense and State seems increasingly remote.